Andromeda, I'm going to tell you a true story. I was going across a bridge across a dam not far from here one day a couple of years ago with my daughter. As I hit the middle, all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by thoughts of suicide and taking my car and crashing over the side, to kill us both.

Now what made this EXTREMELY startling is; I had NO THOUGHTS of suicide AT ALL, and was not in way depressed, prior to this exact moment. Now because I recognized it as the thief that it is, I took authority over it in His name and loosed the fire of the living God to consume it, and it was dealt with.

Now I don't get the newspaper, so I didn't know until I related this to a friend who does, that two different incidents of people jumping off that bridge to commit suicide had happened two weeks prior to my experience. I believe God allowed it to come to me to take authority over it, so it couldn't kill anyone else, and since then, as far as I know, no one else has jumped. I think it was hanging around that bridge, hoping to catch someone else in the fowler's net.

The problem is, when something like this catches someone who IS depressed, and doesn't know the Word, they mistakenly think that the thoughts they are being bombarded with, are their own. THEY ARE NOT. Satan speaks to us, just like a thought, although it's not our thought. The thief cometh not but to kill, steal and destroy, and this is a thief to you, and you MUST stand against it, speak to it out loud even.

I cannot stress this enough (and I will be praying for you the second I finish this post), but there is a spiritual warfare realm and it is obvious you are in it, and YOU MUST, MUST, MUST, put on your armor of the Spirit and begin to recognize who the Word says you are in Him and take that authority and USE IT. You are more than a conqueror through Him, you have HIS righteousness, His Spirit, His power, His measure of faith, and His Word to begin to do battle with.

He gave you all of these things and more because He loves you and prizes you above all else. He has a plan for your life, and if the enemy of your soul is trying this hard to take you out, it must be something and I don't think you would want to miss it.

I tell you what He had me to do when I first came to Him. I stood on one scripture, which I spoke out loud for at least 2 months, until it got down into my spirit. It was this one.......

Luke 10:19 - Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

I think it would do you a world of good to do the same, at the same time commanding that thing to be loosed into the fire of God. Blessings to you.....

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"I would rather train twenty men to pray, than a thousand to preach; A minister's highest mission ought to be to teach his people to pray." -H. MacGregor

HI. First of all, let me make it clear that I am NOT suicidal at this time. However, my greatest fear is that I will commit suicide and go to Hell.

none of us here believes in hell i guess, at least not that kind of hell people normally think of, in my opinion "hell" is just the realm of the dead, the netherworld, sheol - sheol is no place of torment

Who will grant me this, that thou mayst protect me in hell, and hide me till thy wrath pass, and appoint me a time when thou wilt remember me? (Job 14:13) For now I should have been asleep and still, and should have rest in my sleep: With kings and consuls of the earth, who build themselves solitudes: Or with princes, that possess gold, and fill their houses with silver: Or as a hidden untimely birth, I should not be; or as they that, being conceived, have not seen the light. There the wicked cease from tumult, and there the wearied in strength are at rest. And they sometime bound together without disquiet, have not heard the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master. (Job 3:13-19)

Douay-Rheims Translation

i think that people who commited suicide go to hell is the most evil doctrine of all, why should God do something? but i don't want "to give you permission" to comit suicide

Kevin

A short time ago I decided to "come out of the closet" regarding my spiritual life, and believes in Holy Scripture. No I am not gay, said for the literalistic.

To the public I learned to say and act, pretend, lie, so I would be falsely in comfort. It no longer works for me, I did this most of the time for the normie, non URs I do still consciously slide back into my pretense. And for my earthly family. I did decide not to debate with "anyone". I feel spiritually this is coming to a quicken end.

That being said; I did try to do suicide in 2003, my perfect plan to end the torture of being torn apart spiritually. Passing into the Spirit of Truth.

It was a plan of perfection to take the quick route to my Father and Family. It could not fail. 35 miles down an isolated road rarely traveled. Well it did not work, and I was pronounced dead 2 times. It was nothing but a miracle I was found. Details I do not think are need, they seem to only entertain.

"I did not come to take you out of the world, but leave you here." I would like to black that verse out of the Bible.

As one who has known a great deal of pain in my life, I can sympathize with the desire to end this life. I can, because prior to knowing Him I had contemplated the same more than once. Thank GOD, He didn't let it go any farther than that, and it is totally a work of His mercy and His Spirit, that it didn't.

We cannot undo the sometimes horrific things that have happened in our life or even to us personally, nor can we or anyone else heal the emotional pain and scarring that come with them. But there is One who can.

Our emotions are part of our soul and the Lord showed me that they must be submitted to His Spirit, must go through the fire that cleanses and makes whole, just like the rest of our being. They are as the waves of the storm that were whipped up by Satan the wind, to get the disciples (and us) to look at them, and not Him.

They are what cause us to look at the circumstances, thereby "exciting" the lust of the eyes (trying to figure out what to do about it ourselves/knowledge to make one wise), and getting us ready to listen to the "solution" offered by the enemy of our souls to make us feel "better' (lust of the flesh activated), and the end result is death, and if the enemy has his way about it, literal death.

The emotions are stimulated by the "eye gate", one of the gates of hell/separation from God, that He said WOULD NOT prevail against the church/called out ones. Looking at our pain/past hurts/rejections, ect. keeps us vulnerable to the enemy of our souls. God wasn't telling us to think on whatsoever things be lovely, pure, ect. because He wanted us to be "nice" people. He was telling us the way to overcome the gates of hell.

The only way that Jesus could have walked out what He knew was coming, and OVERCOME, was to keep His eyes focused on the Father. The servant is not greater than the master, and we have to discipline ourselves to keep our eye focused above and not below also.

Now I'm going to tell you what He had me to do, and that was to lay my hand over my heart (more for me as a point of contact than anything else), and I prayed and asked Him to consume my emotions with the fire of His Spirit. If we ask anything that is in accordance with His perfect will for us, we know that He will give it to us, we have that promise. We know that our soul is to be made a living sacrifice and that the emotions are part of that soul. So we have every right to expect in faith, that a change is going to come about.

For me, as one who was ruled through my emotions my whole life, prior to Him setting this part of my house in order, the liberty of His Spirit in this area of my soul was profound and tangible. It would take me pages to explain the differences I experienced. God's Spirit is not an emotion, and He desires to rule in His temple, and that means He is to be Lord over our emotions, too. I hope this helps both of you; I have added you both to my prayer list. God bless........

« Last Edit: February 01, 2009, 11:33:24 PM by Cardinal »

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"I would rather train twenty men to pray, than a thousand to preach; A minister's highest mission ought to be to teach his people to pray." -H. MacGregor

I don't believe fear of punishment should have any bearing on anything we do, including whether we commit suicide or not. Our depth of character ultimately will determine how we respond to extremely painful circumstances. Passing such a test of character will lead to even more depth of character.

Some simply find themselves in pain which is too much to bear. After years, with no evidence that relief will come, some are simply forced to bail out. "Forced?" someone might ask?

One person cannot judge another person's pain. I (for example) am so positive and "up" all the time that I am never in danger of killing myself due to a bad emotional state brought on by psychological issues. On the other hand a severe physical circumstance can lead a person such as I to suicide. I came so close after fighting for air and sleep over a number of years. I did 'pass the test' but if I had not gotten the trach and vent I do not believe that I could have resisted the urge to end it all for much longer.

When I was 17 I did try and failed. Since that time I have come to know the love of God, married an incredible man, had two beautiful children, am able to comfort my mother when my dad died, teach many children how to read, and who knows how many other lives I may touch in some way.

If I had succeeded, none of this would have happened. I believe that would have been the torment and weeping that I would have experienced. Suicide is a selfish act that robs those you love, that would be the hell.

I at least mostly don't believe in it, but I absolutely do believe in letting "nature" take its course in many cases. IMO, we go through ridiculous contortions (generally as a society) to keep ourselves and others "alive" (think Terri Scheivo for example, and my grandmother). By doing so, we often put them and ourselves through years of pain, misery, spend millions of dollars a year, to keep someone from going to what would be a "better place". My wife's a cardiac critical care nurse, and they often keep people breathing for days, months, years, when that's all they're doing...breathing and making waste...and when they could have quickly and mercifully passed on to the next phase. My request is basic measures, natural when possible, otherwise make me comfortable and let me go...

Do you think the promise to not let anything come upon us that we cannot bear, and with the temptation, will make a way of escape applies, and if so, how?

"I knelt to drink,And knew that I was on the brinkOf endless joy. And everywhereI turned I saw a wonder there."

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Kevin

I don't believe fear of punishment should have any bearing on anything we do, including whether we commit suicide or not. Our depth of character ultimately will determine how we respond to extremely painful circumstances. Passing such a test of character will lead to even more depth of character.

Some simply find themselves in pain which is too much to bear. After years, with no evidence that relief will come, some are simply forced to bail out. "Forced?" someone might ask?

One person cannot judge another person's pain. I (for example) am so positive and "up" all the time that I am never in danger of killing myself due to a bad emotional state brought on by psychological issues. On the other hand a severe physical circumstance can lead a person such as I to suicide. I came so close after fighting for air and sleep over a number of years. I did 'pass the test' but if I had not gotten the trach and vent I do not believe that I could have resisted the urge to end it all for much longer.

How do you folks feel about 'mercy killing'. Is it murder?

"mercy Killing" Absolutely a question that I have thought about, such as Death Penalty", I know I could answer both, but now being awaken, know in this world, I could "flip" if it Involved "me" or my earthly family, or UR family. If I answered it maybe true, or turn into a lie.

Exactly. It's not ours to take. I faced the possibility of that with my son before he recovered and for me, it was not an option, nor a "choice". That word really grates on my spirit in the abortion debate as well, it's like chalk on a blackboard, every time I hear the word, "pro-choice". It's the height of the arrogance and pride of man to think to HE has that "choice" in the first place. My Blessings....

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"I would rather train twenty men to pray, than a thousand to preach; A minister's highest mission ought to be to teach his people to pray." -H. MacGregor

martincisneros

I at least mostly don't believe in it, but I absolutely do believe in letting "nature" take its course in many cases. IMO, we go through ridiculous contortions (generally as a society) to keep ourselves and others "alive" (think Terri Scheivo for example, and my grandmother). By doing so, we often put them and ourselves through years of pain, misery, spend millions of dollars a year, to keep someone from going to what would be a "better place". My wife's a cardiac critical care nurse, and they often keep people breathing for days, months, years, when that's all they're doing...breathing and making waste...and when they could have quickly and mercifully passed on to the next phase. My request is basic measures, natural when possible, otherwise make me comfortable and let me go...

You've hit upon a major issue that I have with this partial annihilationism that's in some UR circles of taking one or two verses out of Ecclesiastes WAY OUT OF CONTEXT and asserting by them total oblivion until the resurrection. If in this life only we have hope, then we better each be spending billions of dollars on saving these lives so that when medical science is able to cure us or when our prayers and gifts have become a memorial before God we might find our healing and prosperous lives again in this life!

Mercy killing is a sticky subject. If I were on the front-lines with some soldiers and something happened that was catastrophic to a fellow soldier and we were in enemy territory and there was no hope of anything resembling life again for the soldier, or no life as they'd known it with half of their chest blown open and they're lying there with bloody teeth in shock and half staring at me and half staring at the spirit world, then I'd take my gun and blow their head off.

Although I beleive in the Hosea 2:18; Jeremiah 31:27-28 covenant, apart from that manifestation of Jesus's High Priestly ministry that's promised throughout Scripture in the behalf of animals, then when one is very advanced in years and is having very deep physical pain issues and veterinary science isn't any more advanced than it is, then what can you do other than euthanize?

But, it's understandable that in less dramatic situations where all hope is gone of helping someone that we run into too many gray areas on whether or not to "pull the plug." All we've got in the meantime is a case by case look at anything that comes up. But if they're just food for worms rather than the image of God after they've died and all of this being transformed by the renewing of their mind has become worm food or fish food, and if godliness is only profitable for this life 'cause you're exterminated at death utterly until the resurrection, then we should fight tooth and nail to keep each person alive with as much money, science, fasting and prayer, etc. as we can.

If there is nowhere better to send them other than to the end of the line for the resurrection and God's completely lost His kid until He's reconstituted them at the end of the age, then mercy killing becomes as problematic as having kids under the ET 'age of accountability' paradigm, vegetarianism under the ET 'survival of the fittest; God allows/permits/sanctions irrevocable harm' paradigm, etc. There is a reason why any sentient being with the tiniest, tiniest hint of rationality has an issue with being buried alive. It's not the place that their soul belongs at all, whether in consciousness or unconsciousness.

martincisneros

Yeah, I agree with Kevin. There are those kinds of legal options available.

A quick point of clarification on my battlefield analogy, lest I deeply offend someone with military family members, who perhaps might have even gone through something or may yet in the near future: obviously on the battlefield you're going to be making a 2 to 5 second judgment call based upon the best info that you have as to what are the odds of successfully getting a medic over here to this catastrophically wounded soldier, what's their rank, what's the level of anticipated savagery of the enemy to where they might narrowly save the life only to keep them for torture, leverage, international embarassment if it's a special ops situation that might not even officially exist, etc.

The frame of mind when soldiers wind up making that kind of judgment call is usually about the enemy reviving them only to torture them for info about your unit, how many, where you're at, and what your unit has in available resources, and sometimes they might opt to save the life of someone so they can torture them just for fun. I meant no offense with the analogy with regards to the cheapening of a soldier's life, but it seemed like one of the best illustrations where mercy killing might stare someone in the face though their agony over having to do it would go through the ceiling to where they could be sick for days/years over having had to do that.

Whether in military circumstances or civilian with just someone with cancer that's only going to be a living hell for them where the current level of knowledge of how to save them from the afflictions involved just isn't up to par for what's needed -- the mercy killing subject is a very heart wrenching one that everybody should pray that they never have to face. That can mess with you for years, whether it was on the battlefield or an ailing spouse, child, someone else in the family that you've got guardianship over, or even a beloved animal that you unwittingly find yourself in the position of having to make the [tough sucky] decisions in the behalf of.

I like the option that Kevin brought up about legally making a decision like that ahead of time so that no one else is cornered like an animal by that kind of decision making process and the emotional baggage that would go along with it. You can probably tailor it to be legally binding depending on a certain set of circumstances or a certain number of attempts at bringing you back and then just leave it alone if it's going to cross the line and bring back a vegetable instead that's on life support for eons until the money runs out or until the responsibilities associated are passed down to someone else.

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Paul Hazelwood

I'm sensitive to the gut wrenching reality of the subject and refuse to make any judgments on those who want to allow their loved ones to die as they wish or those who want to try to hang on for dear life.

My concern is the exploitation of people when money is potentially involved such as life insurance policies or trust funds.

Because of that I think it is important to get legal council when you still are able for yourself in those matters so something can be worked out a head of time for when you cannot defend yourself.

Otherwise it still comes down to the basis of fear and just the human emotion of not wanting to let go of our loved ones for that ounce of hope for a modern day miracle. ALL understandable and there is no simple phrase or word that makes perfect sense out of any of it.

Due to that as an outsider to a families situation I support the ones who are facing having to make those decisions just for the simple fact that no matter how it looks, I doubt in the majority of cases there is anything but pain and anguish going on.

Personally, I really don't care what someones religious persuasion is on the matter unless it is them facing the real choice to be made.

Do you think the promise to not let anything come upon us that we cannot bear, and with the temptation, will make a way of escape applies, and if so, how?

"I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength". I believe that through faith anything is 'bearable' but obviously for those who take their own lives it was unbearable as far as they were concerned.

I actually told God "So you think this is bearable? Tough luck!!!". Then came the first 'escape' - a revelation of what the damage would be to my youngest daughter (lifelong emotional scars and pain) and it was then the decision was made that I would endure anything to avoid that for her. It *seems* that if I was on my own it would have been no contest, but that's just hypothetical. That concern for my daughter held me through till they punched the hole in my neck and it's been fairly tolerable since then. So for me:

Escape 1: "Love bears all things". If you have enough love you can endure anything.

Escape 2: The doctors relieved the agony to make it tolerable. (I like those doctor people - occasionally).

I could also look back and say that if I didn't get the trach I could not have endured for very long - daughter or no daughter. Since sleep deprivation makes you go insane that's a very real possibility. On the other hand, since a way of escape was made it makes no sense to come to any conclusions about what would/could have happened.

The people who would have the answers to the 'whys' of suicide are not speaking to me at this time - so I can but speculate that, in their weakness, they were not able to bear whatever the pain was. Or I could speculate that they just gave in to evil and wanted commit murder.

Knowing fairly well the character of some who committed suicide the first explanation seems more plausible.

Just for the record - I believe that taking your own life is wrong, but I do understand why some choose that path.

Some obviously have a closer first-hand experience with it than others...I think it's a complicated issue, and often we don't know for sure what we would do unless we're there...and there but by the Grace of God...

There's a statistic I've quoted many times to individuals contemplating suicide, and you addressed it, Byron...it's often been a very effective tool to look the person in the eye and say "statistics show that when a person commits suicide, they take at least one person with them (either through emotional/spiritual destruction, or eventually suicide themselves), and they usually know who that would be. Who would it be in your case?"

Some obviously have a closer first-hand experience with it than others...I think it's a complicated issue, and often we don't know for sure what we would do unless we're there...and there but by the Grace of God...

There's a statistic I've quoted many times to individuals contemplating suicide, and you addressed it, Byron...it's often been a very effective tool to look the person in the eye and say "statistics show that when a person commits suicide, they take at least one person with them (either through emotional/spiritual destruction, or eventually suicide themselves), and they usually know who that would be. Who would it be in your case?"

I can definitely see the self centeredness of the act although the feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness are hard to deal with. Going through those valleys are a means to gaining wisdom and strength and if a person has the hope of a better future or see any benefit to the suffering then that hope can be a means to cope (an escape route).

On the other end of the spectrum (fear of punishment) my wife says that fear of hell always caused her to chase suicidal thoughts out of her head as a teen. I'm sure it IS a deterrent if you believe it. But AISI the strongest permanent basis for any action is truth and love. My kids won't have the deterrent that my wife had since I have ripped that whole ET belief system to shreds around my house for the last year or so.

I can definitely see the self centeredness of the act although the feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness are hard to deal with.

Yeah, I think a big part of the problem is, especially when we're hurting, is we get tunnel vision...almost all we can see is the pain and what we think is the way out...and we get so fixated on that...that's why another statistic holds, and that's if you can take away/interrupt the primary means of killing themselves that the person is locked in on, they will often stay alive. What I think happens is, they're "jolted" and begin to be able to see other things besides the end of that dark tunnel, so they begin to entertain other ideas and options... That may s/w be where the Spirit enters in as well, speaking to us, getting our attention, and getting our attention off what we're fixated on as the only way out...offering that "way of escape"...my

Another interesting note on the psychology of suicidal thoughts. Fantasizing about suicide is VERY empowering because it gives the person a sense of "I can stop this - I can get out of this situation in one second flat".

Most suicidal fantasies are just that - fantasies (and it's best if they remain that way ).

Really, the bottom line in suicide is spelled H-O-P-E-L-E-S-S-N-E-S-S

When God gives us an infinite supply of hope then it totally counteracts the effects of depression in a powerful way.